15 September 2009

The struggle for life

Fight Aging has a collection of interesting links on the current state of anti-aging research, and makes an important point about the apparently-disappointing rate of increase in life expectancy:

At present, life expectancy is increasing at about one year for every five years that pass - only 20% of what is needed to keep our expected remaining years of life increasing at the same speed with which we age. That said, it is worth remembering that life expectancy is a statistical construct based on past data - it is a helpful measure of progress, but not necessarily an indication of where we are now. I suspect it lags present medical advances, for example, because their effects on mortality rate might not show up for a decade or more.

That is to say, conventional life-expectancy figures aren't a good guide to how long a person who is now middle-aged can actually expect to live, even assuming only present-day technology. It's more a measure of past progress. Remember also, of course, that most such figures are national averages which are pulled down by the obesity epidemic and by the shrinking but still substantial number of smokers. Realistic life expectancy for healthy people is probably much longer, and increasing faster, than conventional statistics would suggest.

The only way that really significant increases in lifespan can be achieved is by slowing and reversing the aging process and keeping people young amd vigorous -- adding extra years "in the middle, not the end" of life. More here.

I hope life expectancy is genetic. My parents are 83 and 83 and they have siblings who are in their late 80's and early nineties. They are all in good health and still drive and take care of themselves.

Genetics has always been a major factor, but it's being superseded by technology and the improved environment which technology generates -- as the doubling of life expectancy in the 20th century shows.

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About Me

Individualist, transhumanist, American patriot, socialist, atheist, liberal, optimist, pragmatist, and regular guy -- it has been my great good fortune to live my whole life free of "spiritual" concepts of any kind. I believe that evidence and reason are the keys to understanding reality; that it is technology rather than ideology or politics that has been the great liberator of humanity; and that in the long run human intelligence is the most powerful force in the universe.